


(i will come back to) haunt you

by IuvenesCor



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Drabble, F/M, and during S3 E5 4722 Hours, introspective, set around S2 E1 Shadows
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-10
Updated: 2017-04-10
Packaged: 2018-10-17 03:03:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10585089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IuvenesCor/pseuds/IuvenesCor
Summary: Time and tragedies make ghosts of them both.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [truthtakestime](https://archiveofourown.org/users/truthtakestime/gifts).



> Julie's been making me nostalgic for older, mostly unfinished/unedited works of mine lately, so the fact that this little snippet is finally seeing the light of day after almost a year and a half is entirely all her fault. <3
> 
> Title more or less pulled from Bastille's "Haunt," the very song that inspired this fic.

She has always been his ghost.

No matter what the scenario, inexplicably, she is there. 

Is he missing the key to resolving his work? She is there. 

Is he missing a piece of himself? She is there.

In every conceivable way, Jemma can be a hundred feet or a million miles away and yet to him she remains. Leo sees her, hears her advice and consolation, smells the scent of her hair (faint and comforting and perfect, never anything more or less day in, day out). She is vivid, opaque, tangible in his memories. But by everyone else’s estimation, she really is just a ghost.

He’s learned to live with this: the fact that he is utterly, madly obsessed with every blessed atom of her. Acceptance would benefit him, were it not for his habit of pulling specters out of the air. He certainly can’t stop loving her, but can he really survive the madness of finding her in every corner of his life?

He tries to forget he has this ghost, yet always, from the corner of his eye— always, he sees a flash of a smile at times, a frown at the rest.

He has to wonder if he isn’t haunted for good.

 

<>

 

He is now her ghost.

He is pixels. He is her one light in the dusk. He is a recording from a long time ago stored away in a phone that he engineered. He is her first sanity, her first hope, her first reason for fighting.

But he is nothing short of a phantom, and she has to wonder how long she can last with him like this.

Will. She loves Will. Damn her, but she’s saying it. He is the eyes that keep her focused, the arms that keep her grounded, the chest that keeps her from falling when the homesickness grows unbearable. Yet Will is still there. He’s still flesh and blood, a present fact. That’s something she almost takes for granted after a while.

But then there’s Leo, who’s sustained by little more than memory. She can never, _ever_ let these thoughts of him die. But how long can she stand seeing him in every corner, on every hill, real enough inside her to make it really hurt? It wears her ragged, trying to think of a faster solution to get back home just so she can hear him, see him for real. Just so she won’t take him for granted.

Leo will help her, she’s sure of it. He won’t just stay like this.

She refuses to be haunted for good.


End file.
